well that's cool. everybody has there own way to do things I just found that after you set the bios the way you want and then load windows without using anything from the boards disk and reboot in to windows and see what is realy needed mosty just the chipset drivers then lan audio then with that check that over and reboot back to windows and see were its at then. like my board has the asmeida sata controller on it but windows picks it up and works just fine with out asmeida the drivers on witch I run the optical drives. but funny my last asus sabertooth build was a bad thing it never worked right with things going on like with what your having +. my buddy then bought one thinking it was me and his sabertooth did not last as long as mine a mater of fact it did not stay with him a month and he replaced it with a giga ud3 took all the same parts off the asus and it fired right up no issues . I went asrock intel and used everything off my asus except for the amd chip and it fired right up no issues. them 2 asus boards just left me not looking at asus anymore do to the time ,trouble, and money we spent on something that never worked out right. both asus boards were bought 3 weeks apart with different hardware that all worked just fine on an nother brands board. so anyway good luck.